Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
Hi, On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 8:53 AM, Guillaume Paumier gpaum...@wikimedia.org wrote: I think the Tech news page makes it simple enough to get involved and contribute: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News#contribute ; We also have a reasonably-stable schedule, so now we just need more people to give a hand. I'm actually drafting an overview of how Tech news works behind the scenes; I'll share it on this list when it's out. As promised, here's the link to that post: https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/01/07/tech-news-fighting-technical-information-overload-for-wikimedians/ -- Guillaume Paumier Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On 12/06/2013 08:51 PM, Daniel Friesen wrote: And the MediaWiki development community is separate from Wikimedia and consists of more than just people developing features intended for the Wiki[pm]edia community. I do not believe it should be the responsibility of volunteer MediaWiki community developers to provide the on-site deployment news for a single user of the software. That's a fair point. However, some commits (e.g. an initial deployment of an extension to a particular Wikimedia wiki, or a major configuration change), specifically or primarily affect Wikimedia. It would be reasonable to add it to Tech News then. Matt Flaschen ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
K. Peachey wrote:
People that are interested in the version will more than likely already
know about [[Special:Version]], if they want the added onscreen [clutter]
presence they could whip up a gadget or something to pull it from the API.
Any wiki wanting to use a site notice to display version information could
presumably use the {{CURRENTVERSION}} magic word inside the page
MediaWiki:Sitenotice, of course. But I doubt many wiki communities
really want this.
Version numbers, particularly with MediaWiki extensions, hot fixes, and
Git branches, can be a bit tricky. I doubt many users would gain a lot by
seeing 1.23wmf6 (d8475d3) change to some other partial hash. I suppose
you could truncate and users could see the difference between 1.23wmf6 and
1.23wmf7 more easily, but I think users are instead interested in what's
actually changing that affects them.
We have Tech/News and the ambassadors mailing list and IRC and other
communication avenues. Avoiding banner blindness is a real concern and the
possible benefit seems small. My two cents. :-)
MZMcBride
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Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 5:19 AM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: People that are interested in the version will more than likely already know about [[Special:Version]], if they want the added onscreen [clutter] presence they could whip up a gadget or something to pull it from the API. On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Bináris wikipo...@gmail.com wrote: There could be a small-sized version number somewhere on screen. Those who are interested in would learn where it is and could watch it, while others won't be disturbed. Indeed, and here is an example: https://pt.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Helder.wiki/Tools/AddMediaWikiVersionLinkToRecentChanges.js Helder ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On Dec 6, 2013 1:12 PM, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote: Hoi, Let us be honest indeed. The others are not heard when they scream and shout in their little corner of the world.. Thanks, Gerard How true. Alex asked because of a major upgrade problem on Wikisource which interrupted almost everyone. See wikisource-l for details. I think there are times when a community would like a mass notice of some sort, and it will differ based on the project and community size and the likely impact of the upgrade. -- John Vandenberg ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
2013/12/6 Guillaume Paumier gpaum...@wikimedia.org I think the Tech news page makes it simple enough to get involved and contribute: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News#contribute ; We also have a reasonably-stable schedule, so now we just need more people to give a hand. I'm actually drafting an overview of how Tech news works behind the scenes; I'll share it on this list when it's out. Well actually, this reminds of the perennial who should update the RELEASE-NOTES discussion. It's hard to update it all the time in Gerrit, because it creates a lot of conflicts, so people don't do it and leave it to the release manager (or something along these lines). The RELEASE-NOTES file should be useful for people who install MediaWiki on their servers. It isn't so useful for Wikipedia readers and editors. The Tech News should do the job of RELEASE-NOTES for Wikipedia readers and editors, and it's easy to update it because it's a wiki page. What can be suggested is that every time a significant feature that visibly affects end-users is merged, the developer who committed it should update the Tech News page, and before publishing Tech News a responsible editor (Guillaume?) should edit it and remove the less important things. Of course, there are two problems: * What's a significant feature that visibly affects end-users * How to get developers not to forget to write that. Quim, Guillaume - ideas on how to improve it? -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 9:31 AM, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: * How to get developers not to forget to write that. Quim, Guillaume - ideas on how to improve it? There's already a reminder at the top of https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments , and Greg does a great job at highlighting the major changes that are going to be deployed every week (which are then included into tech news). Maybe we should add a similar one to the code review checklist? https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Gerrit/Code_review#Review_checklist I'm open to other suggestions. -- Guillaume Paumier ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 9:30 AM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: How true. Alex asked because of a major upgrade problem on Wikisource which interrupted almost everyone. See wikisource-l for details. I think there are times when a community would like a mass notice of some sort, and it will differ based on the project and community size and the likely impact of the upgrade. Agreed; while Tech news can help communicate general technical news to Wikimedians, it isn't supposed to be a substitute for targeted communication with specific wikis or language communities. Ultimately, it's the responsibility of the developer (or their product manager / community liaison if they're lucky enough to have one) to make sure users are properly informed of a major technical change they've made. I'm also available to support developers who need help disseminating such information, but I can't do that unless someone asks :) -- Guillaume Paumier ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On Fri, 06 Dec 2013 09:31:09 +0100, Amir E. Aharoni amir.ahar...@mail.huji.ac.il wrote: Well actually, this reminds of the perennial who should update the RELEASE-NOTES discussion. It's hard to update it all the time in Gerrit, because it creates a lot of conflicts, so people don't do it and leave it to the release manager (or something along these lines). As recently discussed here [1], this is a solved problem, someone just has to write some glue code for jenkins, deploy the new versions and the conflicts will be gone forever. Maybe everyone should ask the responsible people at WMF to prioritize this instead of perennially complaining. [1] http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/403927 -- Matma Rex ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On Fri, 06 Dec 2013 08:53:36 +0100, Guillaume Paumier gpaum...@wikimedia.org wrote: Developers would be ideally-placed to help identify noteworthy changes that will affect Wikimedia users, but most find that activity about as interesting as writing documentation, which says something :) Earlier this year, in a discussion about Gerrit keywords, I suggested that we could use them to tag noteworthy changes, in order to make it easier for developers to identify noteworthy changes, while reducing overhead. Unfortunately, the discussion apparently died: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/68183/focus=68292 In the meantime, sending a short message to the wikitech-ambassadors list, or dumping a gerrit/bugzilla link at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/Next is the best way to make sure something is communicated to Wikimedians who have subscribed to be informed of tech-related changes likely to affect them. I have ideas on how to improve things in the long term, but I'm open to other suggestions to improve things in the shorter term as well. The reason tech news are not updated is because it has to be done after the patch is merged. The merger will almost always assume it's the patch creator's responsibility (which is reasonable to me, personally). Then, the patch creator will… * likely not even notice the merge happening if he ignores mails from gerrit * just forget to do this * no longer remember what exactly the patch was about which makes writing any notes harder. We should come up with the way to write Wikimedia release notes/tech news at the same time we write end-user release notes – when creating the patch. -- Matma Rex ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On 2013-12-06 12:31 AM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote: The RELEASE-NOTES file should be useful for people who install MediaWiki on their servers. It isn't so useful for Wikipedia readers and editors. The Tech News should do the job of RELEASE-NOTES for Wikipedia readers and editors, and it's easy to update it because it's a wiki page. What can be suggested is that every time a significant feature that visibly affects end-users is merged, the developer who committed it should update the Tech News page, and before publishing Tech News a responsible editor (Guillaume?) should edit it and remove the less important things. MediaWiki is not a Wikimedia-only product, Wikimedia and Wikipedia are one user of MediaWiki. And the MediaWiki development community is separate from Wikimedia and consists of more than just people developing features intended for the Wiki[pm]edia community. I do not believe it should be the responsibility of volunteer MediaWiki community developers to provide the on-site deployment news for a single user of the software. ~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://danielfriesen.name/] ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
There could be a small-sized version number somewhere on screen. Those who are interested in would learn where it is and could watch it, while others won't be disturbed. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
People that are interested in the version will more than likely already know about [[Special:Version]], if they want the added onscreen [clutter] presence they could whip up a gadget or something to pull it from the API. On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Bináris wikipo...@gmail.com wrote: There could be a small-sized version number somewhere on screen. Those who are interested in would learn where it is and could watch it, while others won't be disturbed. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
[Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
Users are very confused and worried any time a new version of wiki software is launched and tested, and some major or minor bug comes invariably out. A clear message using central sitenotice, with links to doc pages listing the changes at different levels of detail and to their talk pages to discuss them and to alert for bugs, is mandatory IMHO. Tech news are largely insufficient; evidence of work in progress should be clearly visible into all pages of interested projects. It's a basic matter of Wikilove. Alex ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 8:28 PM, Alex Brollo alex.bro...@gmail.com wrote: Users are very confused and worried any time a new version of wiki software is launched and tested, and some major or minor bug comes invariably out. A clear message using central sitenotice, with links to doc pages listing the changes at different levels of detail and to their talk pages to discuss them and to alert for bugs, is mandatory IMHO. Tech news are largely insufficient; evidence of work in progress should be clearly visible into all pages of interested projects. It's a basic matter of Wikilove. Every two weeks for major stuff?, Apart from Sitenotices being disruptive and stupid, And people will just start to get that used to them that they won't even notice (or worse, use blocking technologies to get rid of them). ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
Hi, What about subscribing to this list instead? I think that users who want to see updates, should use relevant information channels, rather than forcing everyone to see notices they may not be interested in. On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 11:28 AM, Alex Brollo alex.bro...@gmail.com wrote: Users are very confused and worried any time a new version of wiki software is launched and tested, and some major or minor bug comes invariably out. A clear message using central sitenotice, with links to doc pages listing the changes at different levels of detail and to their talk pages to discuss them and to alert for bugs, is mandatory IMHO. Tech news are largely insufficient; evidence of work in progress should be clearly visible into all pages of interested projects. It's a basic matter of Wikilove. Alex ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
I disagree with Alex, usually people don't give a damn about new deployments. Just geeks and technical people (poeple who work on templates, bots, etc.) care about these stuff Best On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 2:04 PM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, What about subscribing to this list instead? I think that users who want to see updates, should use relevant information channels, rather than forcing everyone to see notices they may not be interested in. On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 11:28 AM, Alex Brollo alex.bro...@gmail.com wrote: Users are very confused and worried any time a new version of wiki software is launched and tested, and some major or minor bug comes invariably out. A clear message using central sitenotice, with links to doc pages listing the changes at different levels of detail and to their talk pages to discuss them and to alert for bugs, is mandatory IMHO. Tech news are largely insufficient; evidence of work in progress should be clearly visible into all pages of interested projects. It's a basic matter of Wikilove. Alex ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l -- Amir ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
I disagree that sitenotices are stupid or disruptive. It's a good way to inform users about really important stuff, which unfortunatelly is sometimes misused for something irrelevant. However this way everyone can be informed when needed and that's good. Using this for update information is, of course, not a best solution. On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 11:33 AM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 8:28 PM, Alex Brollo alex.bro...@gmail.com wrote: Users are very confused and worried any time a new version of wiki software is launched and tested, and some major or minor bug comes invariably out. A clear message using central sitenotice, with links to doc pages listing the changes at different levels of detail and to their talk pages to discuss them and to alert for bugs, is mandatory IMHO. Tech news are largely insufficient; evidence of work in progress should be clearly visible into all pages of interested projects. It's a basic matter of Wikilove. Every two weeks for major stuff?, Apart from Sitenotices being disruptive and stupid, And people will just start to get that used to them that they won't even notice (or worse, use blocking technologies to get rid of them). ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On 05.12.2013. 11:37, Petr Bena wrote: I disagree that sitenotices are stupid or disruptive. It's a good way to inform users about really important stuff, which unfortunatelly is sometimes misused for something irrelevant. However this way everyone can be informed when needed and that's good. Using this for update information is, of course, not a best solution. Maybe people could see information about software update when they first time log in after the update? Perhaps even better: in site notifications? ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On Thu, 2013-12-05 at 11:28 +0100, Alex Brollo wrote: Users are very confused and worried any time a new version of wiki software is launched and tested, and some major or minor bug comes invariably out. So a constant Be confused and worried, every Thursday! site notice on Wikipedias (Tuesday for other production sites [1]) would help? ;) andre [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/Roadmap -- Andre Klapper | Wikimedia Bugwrangler http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/ ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
Sitenotice would be an exaggeration. Google and Facebook and millions of other sites update their software, probably even more frequently than we do, and without any big notifications to all users every week. People who consider themselves capable of testing new features should just sign up to this mailing list. If the traffic here is too high or the content too technical, I strongly recommend the wikitech-ambassadords, which was started precisely with this in mind and is doing the job pretty well : https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors My dream scenario would be to do deployments similarly to the way Mozilla and Google release versions of their browsers - beta and release. Logged-in users who opt in would be connected to a newer version of MediaWiki that will be deployed to everybody the following week. Same URL, same account, same preferences, same content - just different software. Currently with the beta labs we don't have the same account and the same content, so it's not as useful for crowd-sourcing the testing. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore 2013/12/5 Alex Brollo alex.bro...@gmail.com Users are very confused and worried any time a new version of wiki software is launched and tested, and some major or minor bug comes invariably out. A clear message using central sitenotice, with links to doc pages listing the changes at different levels of detail and to their talk pages to discuss them and to alert for bugs, is mandatory IMHO. Tech news are largely insufficient; evidence of work in progress should be clearly visible into all pages of interested projects. It's a basic matter of Wikilove. Alex ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
Le 05/12/13 11:28, Alex Brollo a écrit : Users are very confused and worried any time a new version of wiki software is launched and tested, and some major or minor bug comes invariably out. A clear message using central sitenotice, with links to doc pages listing the changes at different levels of detail and to their talk pages to discuss them and to alert for bugs, is mandatory IMHO. Tech news are largely insufficient; evidence of work in progress should be clearly visible into all pages of interested projects. It's a basic matter of Wikilove. Hello Alex, The large majority of the 500 millions of users browsing our sites don't care about software updates. That is maybe appealing to a few thousands user at most. So I would prefer we do not annoy 9 times the population of France :-D Those interested can look at: WMF deployment calendar: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployment Roadmap of MediaWiki core deployments: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/Roadmap Whenever a new version is pushed, a script generate an exhaustive list of changes being deployed at: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.23/wmf5 The link being reachable from the Roadmap page above. Finally there is the very useful wikitech-ambassadors mailing list which is used to reach out to the community whenever a big new feature is landing in (ie change of the search backend, OAuth, HTTPS ..). That is worth a read :-] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-ambassadors cheers, -- Antoine hashar Musso ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
The sites are updated weekly, sometimes with additional deployments inbetween the scheduled ones. Constant sitenotice would be a bad idea. I suggest you subscribe to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News , which is an also weekly newsletter summarising new features and important fixed bugs every week, as well as providing links to the detailed change logs. -- Matma Rex ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On 5 December 2013 13:08, Bartosz Dziewoński matma@gmail.com wrote: The sites are updated weekly, sometimes with additional deployments inbetween the scheduled ones. Constant sitenotice would be a bad idea. I suggest you subscribe to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News , which is an also weekly newsletter summarising new features and important fixed bugs every week, as well as providing links to the detailed change logs. Not a bad idea, although every time someone says xx needs to be communicated better, someone else responds with there's a mailing list for that! So far, based on recommendations from *this* mailing list, I've subscribed to half a dozen other lists that, generally speaking, didn't give me any more information than I would have received here. (Wikitech Ambassadors? Who's sending anything there? Is it useful anymore?) Some streamlining of communication processes, and giving consideration to a quick and straightforward process to reach information that can be done directly from any WMF wiki, would be a really significant outreach to the primary users. Risker/Anne ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
quote name=Risker date=2013-12-05 time=13:55:42 -0500 On 5 December 2013 13:08, Bartosz Dziewoński matma@gmail.com wrote: The sites are updated weekly, sometimes with additional deployments inbetween the scheduled ones. Constant sitenotice would be a bad idea. I suggest you subscribe to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News , which is an also weekly newsletter summarising new features and important fixed bugs every week, as well as providing links to the detailed change logs. Not a bad idea, although every time someone says xx needs to be communicated better, someone else responds with there's a mailing list for that! So far, based on recommendations from *this* mailing list, I've subscribed to half a dozen other lists that, generally speaking, didn't give me any more information than I would have received here. (Wikitech Ambassadors? Who's sending anything there? Is it useful anymore?) I am, weekly, of all planned deployments. See: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2013-November/000499.html Also, Chad/Nik do regularly for search updates that are happening. It is far from a ghost town and was deemed useful they last time I asked for feedback: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2013-August/000342.html Greg -- | Greg GrossmeierGPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E | | identi.ca: @gregA18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D | ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
The sites are updated weekly, sometimes with additional deployments inbetween the scheduled ones. Constant sitenotice would be a bad idea. I suggest you subscribe to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News , I suggest that MediaWiki uses Twitter to announce new MediaWiki versions like - for example, PHP and ownCloud. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On 12/05/2013 10:08 AM, Bartosz Dziewoński wrote: I suggest you subscribe to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News , which is an also weekly newsletter summarising new features and important fixed bugs every week, as well as providing links to the detailed change logs. Tech News, yeah! I fully agree. Wikimedia users confused about anything tech related (but interested enough to share his/her confusion) should be pointed to Tech News. If their tech interest continues to grow, through the Tech News they will learn about other venues, like wikitech-ambassadors, this list or whatever specialized mailing list or wiki pages they are interested about. -- Quim Gil Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On 12/5/13, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: On 5 December 2013 13:08, Bartosz Dziewoński matma@gmail.com wrote: The sites are updated weekly, sometimes with additional deployments inbetween the scheduled ones. Constant sitenotice would be a bad idea. I suggest you subscribe to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News , which is an also weekly newsletter summarising new features and important fixed bugs every week, as well as providing links to the detailed change logs. Not a bad idea, although every time someone says xx needs to be communicated better, someone else responds with there's a mailing list for that! So far, based on recommendations from *this* mailing list, I've subscribed to half a dozen other lists that, generally speaking, didn't give me any more information than I would have received here. (Wikitech Ambassadors? Who's sending anything there? Is it useful anymore?) Some streamlining of communication processes, and giving consideration to a quick and straightforward process to reach information that can be done directly from any WMF wiki, would be a really significant outreach to the primary users. Risker/Anne ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l As it stands we don't really summarize changes very well, which is a prerequisite for telling people about changes. Occasionally changes make it to Tech/news, but that seems sporadic. Posts to wikitech-ambassadors is from what I've seen, really only for changes we expect to cause problems, which is a small subset of the changes people care about. Really the only in-depth list of changes coming to a wiki near you is https://git.wikimedia.org/activity/ which includes a lot of extra stuff, and is mostly far too technical for users to reasonably understand. I think the best way forward would be to more accurately describe upcoming changes on tech/news. Once we actually have a user-readable summary of actual changes that are happening, then we could have a more reasonable discussion about how to get the information into people who care's hands, without spamming people who don't. Of course maintaining tech/news would probably require more effort being put towards it then is currently done, which requires someone (or multiple someones) to actually do so. --bawolff ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
Le Thu, 05 Dec 2013 19:08:15 +0100, Bartosz Dziewoński matma@gmail.com a écrit: The sites are updated weekly, sometimes with additional deployments inbetween the scheduled ones. Constant sitenotice would be a bad idea. I suggest you subscribe to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News , which is an also weekly newsletter summarising new features and important fixed bugs every week, as well as providing links to the detailed change logs. As a (self-appointed) wikitech-ambassador, I post sometimes messages about new features on the frwiki village pump (after checking if it was not already announced), but I don’t see why posting all deployments (there are many by week from the various teams): users will not read them if there are too much, and it would become a heavy load for ambassadors. @Alex Brollo: do you have some specific example/situation in mind behind your general question? ~ Seb35 ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
How about getting this stuff included in the Signpost? I think that's a good medium for it. There used to be a Technology report but I've not seen it for a while... Dan On 5 December 2013 10:28, Alex Brollo alex.bro...@gmail.com wrote: Users are very confused and worried any time a new version of wiki software is launched and tested, and some major or minor bug comes invariably out. A clear message using central sitenotice, with links to doc pages listing the changes at different levels of detail and to their talk pages to discuss them and to alert for bugs, is mandatory IMHO. Tech news are largely insufficient; evidence of work in progress should be clearly visible into all pages of interested projects. It's a basic matter of Wikilove. Alex ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l -- Dan Garry Associate Product Manager for Platform Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 5:00 PM, Dan Garry dga...@wikimedia.org wrote: How about getting this stuff included in the Signpost? I think that's a good medium for it. There used to be a Technology report but I've not seen it for a while... Dan BRION, they called it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bugs,_Repairs,_and_Internal_Operational_NewsI think they should bring it back. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On 12/05/2013 01:22 PM, Brian Wolff wrote: On 12/5/13, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote: Some streamlining of communication processes, and giving consideration to a quick and straightforward process to reach information that can be done directly from any WMF wiki, would be a really significant outreach to the primary users. Yes, strongly agree. I think the best way forward would be to more accurately describe upcoming changes on tech/news. Once we actually have a user-readable summary of actual changes that are happening, then we could have a more reasonable discussion about how to get the information into people who care's hands, without spamming people who don't. Of course maintaining tech/news would probably require more effort being put towards it then is currently done, which requires someone (or multiple someones) to actually do so. Indeed, to keep one source information up to date streaming regularly the interesting bits from many other sources *requires hard work*. We are lucky of having someone like Guillaume and other contributors investing many hours on it (today mainly translators, writers are welcome too). In community contexts like ours, a good first step is to agree on a streaming channel. This way everybody interested follows it, eventually misses an important piece, eventually contributes it. Once you have One Good Source (e.g. Tech News) it is a lot easier for others (e.g. The Signpost) to follow and expand on specific stories that, eventually if they add value, can be featured again in the One Good Source. Note also that Tech News not only reaches equally any Wikimedia user and community page, it also can do it in the local language, as long as someone provides a translation. The latest Tech News has been distributed in 15 languages: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/Latest A first conclusion of this thread could be an agreement to focus on Tech News as the one good source to subscribe to, recommend, and contribute to via content and translations. Many more steps will be needed to fulfill its mission, but this would be a very useful next step. What do you think? -- Quim Gil Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On Thu, 05 Dec 2013 23:00:04 +0100, Dan Garry dga...@wikimedia.org wrote: How about getting this stuff included in the Signpost? I think that's a good medium for it. Signpost is English-specific, Wikipedia-specific and English-Wikipedia-specific. -- Matma Rex ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
On 5 December 2013 23:36, Bartosz Dziewoński matma@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, 05 Dec 2013 23:00:04 +0100, Dan Garry dga...@wikimedia.org wrote: How about getting this stuff included in the Signpost? I think that's a good medium for it. Signpost is English-specific, Wikipedia-specific and English-Wikipedia-specific. But let's be honest; the disproportionate majority of user discontent is enwiki-specific as well... :-p --HM ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
Hoi, Let us be honest indeed. The others are not heard when they scream and shout in their little corner of the world.. Thanks, Gerard On 5 December 2013 23:41, Happy Melon happy.melon.w...@gmail.com wrote: On 5 December 2013 23:36, Bartosz Dziewoński matma@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, 05 Dec 2013 23:00:04 +0100, Dan Garry dga...@wikimedia.org wrote: How about getting this stuff included in the Signpost? I think that's a good medium for it. Signpost is English-specific, Wikipedia-specific and English-Wikipedia-specific. But let's be honest; the disproportionate majority of user discontent is enwiki-specific as well... :-p --HM ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Please use sitenotice when a new version of software is deployed
Hi, On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 10:22 PM, Brian Wolff bawo...@gmail.com wrote: As it stands we don't really summarize changes very well, which is a prerequisite for telling people about changes. Occasionally changes make it to Tech/news, but that seems sporadic. snip I think the best way forward would be to more accurately describe upcoming changes on tech/news. Once we actually have a user-readable summary of actual changes that are happening, then we could have a more reasonable discussion about how to get the information into people who care's hands, without spamming people who don't. Of course maintaining tech/news would probably require more effort being put towards it then is currently done, which requires someone (or multiple someones) to actually do so. Yep. Most of the limitations of Tech News stem from the fact that it's largely a one-man effort, which means (among other things) that things get missed. As for the accurate description part, it's a difficult balance to strike between tech-savvy readers who would understand accurate (but complex terms), and readers without deep technical expertise who need things to be explained more simply (and maybe slightly inaccurately). On top of that, we also need to facilitate the work of translators by avoiding colloquialisms, etc. I think the Tech news page makes it simple enough to get involved and contribute: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News#contribute ; We also have a reasonably-stable schedule, so now we just need more people to give a hand. I'm actually drafting an overview of how Tech news works behind the scenes; I'll share it on this list when it's out. Developers would be ideally-placed to help identify noteworthy changes that will affect Wikimedia users, but most find that activity about as interesting as writing documentation, which says something :) Earlier this year, in a discussion about Gerrit keywords, I suggested that we could use them to tag noteworthy changes, in order to make it easier for developers to identify noteworthy changes, while reducing overhead. Unfortunately, the discussion apparently died: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/68183/focus=68292 In the meantime, sending a short message to the wikitech-ambassadors list, or dumping a gerrit/bugzilla link at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/Next is the best way to make sure something is communicated to Wikimedians who have subscribed to be informed of tech-related changes likely to affect them. I have ideas on how to improve things in the long term, but I'm open to other suggestions to improve things in the shorter term as well. -- Guillaume Paumier Technical Communications Manager — Wikimedia Foundation ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
